Written in Bone
by MintExpresso
Summary: The key to a young woman's murder lies in her stories, and Temperance struggles to write her own. Casefile.
1. Prawns and Pride

**Title**: Written in Bone  
**Dislcaimer**: I don't own Bones... except on DVD! I somehow doubt that counts, however.  
**Rating**: T  
**Author's Notes**: I love casefiles. Really. I just couldn't resist! Also, owing to a good deal of time off, this should be updated fairly quickly.

-----

"They'd better pick somebody very sexy to play me," Seeley Booth declared, waving the prawn he had speared on a chopstick in the air threateningly, "or there will be hell to pay."

The woman across from him, dressed smartly in a knee-length cranberry skirt, cream cami, and denim blazer rolled her eyes. "Why go through all of that trouble for someone with absolutely no screen time?"

"Right, Bones. Deny it all you want, but somewhere along the line your fact-" he held up one hand to demonstrate- "merged with your fiction," he finished, holding his other hand up and bringing them both together.

"Considering the fact that I barely knew you when I wrote the first book-"

"Though you obviously already found me overpoweringly sexy…"

"-any similarities between you and Andrew Lister are purely coincidental. Not that there are many." She paused; quirked an eyebrow. "Overpoweringly sexy?" The corners of her mouth twitched up slightly, but it was Booth's turn to ignore her.

"So what you're saying," he began slowly, "is that since you barely knew me when you wrote the first book…" he trailed off and grinned at Brennan. "…I'm obviously going to have an even larger presence in this one!"

Brennan shot him a Look and concentrated on chewing her beef.

Booth sighed contentedly and leaned back. "I always knew you though I was sexy."

Brennan swallowed her bite of beef so quickly she choked. After sputtering a moment, she wiped her mouth on her napkin and glowered at the man across from her, who was grinning at her smugly.

"See?" He sounded rather triumphant. "You choked. I'm right."

"Maybe I was choking in indignation at your blatant narcissism."

"Oh, right Bones. Pull out the ten-dollar words. Confuse the poor, dumb FBI agent. You know, in addition to being strong, brave, and impeccably dressed…"

"…and more egotistical than previously thought possible…"

"…I have been gifted with astounding intelligence." He ran a hand through his hair. "Which is also sexy."

Brennan couldn't help but smile at his theatrics, but she did give an encore performance of her outstanding eye-rolling. She really had been perfecting that lately. A sarcastic retort to his statement died on her lips when Booth's cell phone rang.

"This is- yes. Of course, sir. Yes." Booth straightened, as if the person on the other end could see him.

Brennan thrummed her fingers on the edge of her coffee cup impatiently. "You know, Booth," she began, returning to her usual disregard for the person on the other end of the phone, but her partner held up his hand to shush her.

"Yes. Mmm… yes. Oh." He was smirking. Not a good sign. "I have her right here, actually, sir."

Brennan shook her head sharply, brandishing her spoon at Booth. "Oh, no, you don't! I have work to do. I have a late 13th century Nuer warrior to work on before I'm supposed to meet with some actress and if I-"

"Excellent. We'll be there soon," Booth finished smoothly, his silver phone glinting as he snapped it shut. After taking another swig of his coffee, he stood up. "Ready for crime-scene time, Bones?" There it was. That smile.

Brennan stared at him for a moment. Then, she rolled her eyes once more, accepted the inevitable, and stood. "If I'm late, there'll be hell to pay."

"You got it, Bones."

-----

**AN**: Despite the explicit instructions in my letter, Santa failed to bring me a big box of helpful, opinionated, constructive, and all-around-lovely reviews! Sigh. If you'd like to revive my crushed spirits, please leave a note and let me know what you thought!

(P.S.- Santa also forgot to give me those diamond earrings, so if anyone doesn't feel like reviewing, those'll work just fine, too.)

What's next for our dynamic duo? A murder... and some muffins!


	2. Battered and Baked

**Disclaimer: **Despite thre prediction of a fortune cookie, telling me I would soon acquire something of great value, I still do not own Bones. I have, however, received my friend's goldfish to take care of for a week. Are goldfish valuable?

**Author's Notes: **Thanks to all who reviewed! Let's get on with the story...

-----

They hadn't even made it out of the parking lot and he was kissing her hungrily, making her head spin and her stomach flutter. She couldn't resist him, she couldn't say no- or if she did, she didn't want to.

_We're going to be late to the crime scene_, she thought, and then suddenly stopped caring.

-----

Temperance sighed as she crossed out another line on her manuscript. Damnit all, she thought, Kathy and Andy were not supposed to be making out in a parking lot, and she didn't know why she was letting them. She wondered vaguely if it was too late to take out the scene in its entirety.

The SUV jolted, and a line of red pen scrawled itself across the page. Temperance let out a frustrated sigh and jammed the whole manuscript back into her bag. She was supposed to be checking the final draft for errors, not rewriting whole scenes just because she wasn't entirely sure she wanted the people who knew her to be reading them.

Booth was immersed in winding his way through DC traffic, and was considering switching on his siren and risking Cullen's wrath or getting out of the car and walking when he pointed triumphantly at a small, tidy store across the street. "There it is!" he proclaimed, parked (with questionable legality) on the side of the street, and got out.

Temperance grabbed her bag and stepped out of the car. "A… bakery?"

"That's what the sign says, Bones, and I've got an inkling you can read." Booth locked the car with a _chirp_ and strode towards the bakery door.

"What's your problem?" Brennan asked, rushing to keep up with him.

Booth opened the door, still irritable. "Cullen mentioned that he wanted to talk to me when we were out of the field."

"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, going ahead of Booth through the door as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

"Maybe not, but I've got a bad feeling about-" Booth stopped abruptly.

Instead of the warm, heady smell of baking bread and iced pastries, the store was filled with a putrid, sickly-sweet smell that permeated the air. It was even worse than the normal smell of decomposition, and the entire store reeked of it.

Brennan didn't even flinch as she strode to the kitchens in the back, where photographs were being snapped by FBI crime-scene technicians and several police officers were talking in low voices.

"Who are you?" questioned one of the officials, a short, balding man in his late forties with a pepper-gray mustache and a slightly-rumpled suit.

"Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist from the Jeffersonian." It was rather redundant, she thought; she was wearing a navy hazmat suit that she had had Booth stop at the Jeffersonian for. "May I please see the remains?"

He took two steps backwards to let her through and pointed towards a large brick bread-oven in the back. "Help yourself, but nothin' in there looks very appetizing," he chuckled.

"I fail to see how that has any relevance to this investigation," she replied, missing his attempt at humor, and went to peer inside of the oven.

Booth waited. He knew his patience would shortly be rewarded with a barrage of information about the victim, their life, and their death.

Brennan didn't disappoint. "Early twenties," she called back, "Probably female, judging from the orbital ridge." She reached in with gloved hand and gently lifted the skull a few centimeters. "The body was burned, probably for several hours."

"That would explain the oven," Booth retorted. "And the smell."

She ignored him and continued examining the body. It was hard to see much of anything in the darkness of the large oven. "We're going to need to remove the body very carefully to prevent any further damage. She was probably killed violently, and then burned after death."

Booth closed his eyes and sighed. "Someone murders a young woman and burns her to cover it up." It was going to be a very long day.

-----

It was dark by the time they left the bakery, trailed by a few cars of evidence because Booth refused to have his precious, recently-regained SUV smell of burnt flesh.

"You'd think the fact that the body was in a bakery all night would help things out a little," he commented bitterly.

Brennan just laughed. "The smell of decomposing flesh is hard to mask. Try working in a mass grave all day and smelling like that all through the night. When I was in Kosovo, I had to buy a separate bra just for the grave because I couldn't wear anything I'd been in after working."

Booth really hated it when Bones talked about things like sex and lingerie in such a matter-of-fact way. It made his head spin in strange ways, and until he could pop two Advil, he didn't appreciate it.

"I'll drop you off at the front," Booth offered as they arrived at the Jeffersonian.

"You aren't coming in?" she questioned, one foot already out the door.

"I have that meeting with Cullen. I'll be back when that's over," he said grimly, as if he didn't expect to be back at all.

Brennan gave him a wry smile. "Good luck!" she said, a little too enthusiastically, and jogged over to help the CSI technicians unload the body.

------

Zack was examining a body. 200 years old, from Greenland, with nothing incredibly special about him so far other than the fact that Zack was examining him on his own, with no help from Dr. Brennan and no one else looking over his shoulder. He sighed contentedly and picked up the hyoid, which was cracked in two.

Dr. Brennan's voice, giving instructions about the placement of the body, announced not only her arrival, but a new case. Hodgins was already standing up, half-grinning, and Angela had poked her head out of her office to see what the commotion was about. A surge of excitement went through Zack as well. He was placing the halved bone back down on the table and stepping away when Dr. Saroyan breezed past him.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked, giving him a look that told him no answer he gave would be the right one. She glanced over to the blackened, burnt body lying on the table. "Oh, no. You stay right here. The Jeffersonian has been falling behind in its evaluation of historical remains ever since Dr. Brennan began working with the FBI. That's why I hired you. She works on that," she motioned to make her point, "and you work on this." she tapped the Icelander's skull twice and turned to go.

"But Dr. Saroyan, what if they need help on the-"

Camille turned around and fixed Zack in an icy stare again. "I'm sure you will be helping with the case at some point, but that point is not now. Please continue, Dr. Addy," she finished, and Zack complied.

-----

"Please sit down, Booth," Cullen said, writing something on a Post-It note and sticking it to his phone.

"Yes, sir," Booth replied, feeling like a naughty child called down to the principal's office for some playground offense.

Cullen waited a moment, probably just to see Booth try not to squirm, before continuing. "I'd like to discus your work with Dr. Brennan."

-----

**AN**: Did you love it? Did you hate it? Do you doubt my ability to keep this goldfish alive for a week? Please leave a review and let me know!

The next update should come before the weekend is over, and will include some good news, some bad news, and some really good French bread. Mmmm.

Oh, and the grave-bra bit was inspired by Clea Koff's The Bone Woman, which I highly reccomend to anyone even mildly interested in forensic anthropology or social justice in general.


	3. Just Go!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Bones.  
**Author's Note**: Happy 2007, everyone! This chapter was edited while listening to Draco and the Malfoys and We Didn't Start the Fire in a continuous loop, so if I missed anything, blame Harry Potter bands and Billy Joel. Or, you could point it out to me in a review. (Hint- do the latter!)

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Temperance circled the table of bones methodically, taking crisp notes on a sheet of paper. She filled in the blanks, wrote down the body's story in scientific notation on her clipboard. Sex: Female. Age: 19-23, as indicated by long bone fusion, cranial sutures. Healed stress fractures to the tibia and fibula and muscle development indicative of a repetitive motion activity; probably running. Caucasian. Killed by blunt-force trauma to the base of the skull.

She was a translator, really, she reflected. She took the language of the corpse, the story written in the bones, and told it to the world of the living. This was a young woman, who probably went to school, or worked, or both. She was just learning to live on her own, to be independent. She ran, maybe to deal with the new stresses in her life, or just to escape for a little while. She didn't have a chance to defend herself.

The click-clack of heels broke her from her reverie. "How's it going, sweetie?"

Temperance looked up at Angela. "I still don't know who she is, but I found some things that will definitely help." She glanced up at the clock. "I think I'm going to have to cancel my meeting, though."

Angela frowned. "With the actress who's playing you? Haven't you already rescheduled that?"  
Temperance glowered at Angela for a moment. "She's not playing _me_, she's playing _Kathy_. And I'm sure that she'll understand."

"Did you ever find out her name?" the artist asked, putting her hands on her hips in impatience. It would be just like Brennan to blow the poor woman off again.

"Yes, I did," replied Temperance, making another note on her clipboard. "It's Miranda."  
"Miranda…" Angela prompted her to finish, getting an inlking as to where this was going.

"Miranda Otto, and I'm sure that she'll-"

Hodgins nearly dropped the microscope slides he'd been carrying past the two. "You're being played by _Miranda Otto_? That's crazy!"

Temperance threw up a hand in agitation. "She's not playing _me_, she's playing-"

"Close enough, close enough!" Angela shushed her. "Oh, I know I've seen her before, what was she in…?"

"She was in War of the Worlds, the pregnant lady. Man, that movie fell far, far short of causing the panic that the radio drama-"

Zack looked up from where he'd been examining a few fibers under the microscope. "She played Éowyn in Lord of the Rings!" he called out excitedly.

"Zack, why are you discussing fantasy films instead of working on what I asked you to?" Cam inquired as she breezed past with a few papers that needed Brennan's signature.

Angela answered for him. "Because Miranda Otto is playing Brennan- okay, fine, fine!- Brennan's _character_ in the movie based on her book, and Brenn wants to blow her off to work. Again."

Temperance wondered who had fed Miracle-Gro to the proverbial grapevine at the lab. A mere minute ago she had been by herself, doing her job, but she had to go and mention some actress, and suddenly it was like _Sarcophagidae_ to a corpse with everyone. In vain, she tried to defend herself. "My work here is much more important, and I might be able to-"

"What time is your meeting?" Cam questioned, quirking an eyebrow and getting straight to the point, as usual.

Temperance paused. "Eight thirty," she confessed, slightly embarrassed.

Cam gave her an exasperated look. "You are not staying here that late. You are going to leave by six, shower, get dressed, and go meet this actress."

"If I say yes, then will you all please let me get back to work?" she pleaded, realizing the futility of argument.

"Yes. Everybody," Cam announced, "will go back to work. Now."

Temperance was happy to oblige.

-----

Booth's stomach flipped unpleasantly. Cullen wanted to talk about him and Bones. That couldn't be a good sign; the deputy director had never exactly taken a shine to her.

Cullen paused to scrawl his signature at the bottom of some report, set the pen down, sat back, and sighed.

"You work nearly all of your cases with Dr. Brennan," he started. "We get contacted by different branches of the FBI merely because they know that _she_ only works with _you_. Is this really how you want to continue?"

"Sir, I know it's an unusual arrangement-"

"You're damn right it is, Booth."

"-but it works." Booth was beginning to feel panicked under his cool exterior. He'd been working with Bones for months and months, he'd finally gained her trust, her friendship, even, and now Cullen was going to go and ruin everything. He wished he could think of something better to say in his- no, in their defense, but he felt strangely listless at the prospect of returning to work without Bones.

Cullen treated Booth to another infuriating silence as he scrutinized the man across from him for a moment. "You are being permanently assigned to work all cases with her."  
Booth looked up, surprised.

"You and Dr. Brennan," Cullen elaborated, "have never failed to close a case in a timely manner. The Jeffersonian has informed me that they have hired another forensic anthropologist to help out with the increased workload you've been causing there. As long as you agree to continue taking all responsibility for bringing her into the field, I would be an idiot to do anything but encourage you to keep working with her."  
Booth quashed his natural response ("Yes, sir, you would, sir,") and simply nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"That's all, Booth, go ahead," Cullen replied, returning to his paperwork. "And keep that damn squint in one piece; it seems she's dead useful."

"Yes, she is," Booth replied, grinning, as he left the office. He closed the door behind him, threw his keys to the SUV up in the air, caught them, and wondered why he'd been so worried in the first place.

-----

"I analyzed the ash you collected, which, besides containing various bits of the victim, also had fragments of wood from an _acer_ _saccharum_, or Sugar Maple." Hodgins said.

"What's it used for?" Brennan questioned, bending over to look more closely at the fracturing caused by the blunt trauma.

Hodgins shook his head. "A lot of things. Butcher blocks, bowling pins, sometimes baseball bats…"  
"This fracture almost looks like it could have been caused by a baseball bat," Brennan replied, using the microscope to bring up a large image of the fracture on a screen. She frowned, crossed her arms, and leaned closer. "But there's not enough fracturing to indicate the end of the bat. Whatever was used to kill her was smaller, but still probably cylindrical," she finished.

"Sweetie, you need to get going," Angela called out from her office.

"But Ange, if I stay just a few more minutes then I can probably-"

"Then you'll probably show up late, smelling like burnt flesh, or cancel last minute. Go. Give her insight into your character. Have a good time. Tell her you loved her in Flight of the Phoenix. Just go."

"I never saw that movie."

"It doesn't matter," replied Angela, exasperated. "It's already nearly six, you need to go."

"Fine," Brennan sighed. "I'm leaving."

Angela made sure of it by following the reluctant anthropologist around as she gathered her things, put on her coat, and left.

"Is she gone yet?" Hodgins asked as Angela returned from the parking lot where she had just finished forcibly removing the protesting author.

"Yes, thank God," Angela replied. "You'd think she'd be excited about this whole movie thing, but no, not Brenn." The artist rolled her eyes.

"Well, I think I'm about done for the night," Hodgins stated, stretching. "How about you?"

Angela grinned knowingly. "I know a great French place that I would be happy to let you take me to."

Hodgins grinned back. "_Bien sûr, ma cherie_."

-----

AN: Start 2007 out right and begin a tradition of leaving helpful, opinionated reviews! Or at least leave me a message and tell me what you liked, what you didn't, if I actually managed to scare you with Cullen, what you think is going to happen, if you have no clue who Miranda Otto is anyway, or anything else you'd like to get off your chest.

Next chapter? The author, the actress, and Brennan gets introduced to something all of us know and love.


	4. Stories of a Stranger

**Disclaimer**: Wait, let me check… Nope, I still don't own Bones.  
**Author's Note**: Life's been kind of crazy lately, but updates should go back to their normal pace after this is posted. If you're reading this- thank you so much for waiting for this chapter!

In case you've forgotten what I'm writing about anyways, here are a few key words to jog your memory:_ burnt body, book, movie, Miranda Otto, bakery_. Helpful? No, probably not, but fun anyways. Let's get started!

-----

As Booth made his way towards Brennan's office the next morning, he heard a low moan coming from his destination. Several different scenarios flashed, against his will, before his eyes, and he ran the last few steps to the door, which he flung open without knocking.

"What have they done?" Brennan was staring at the computer screen in abject horror, wrists pressed to her temples. She failed to acknowledge Booth, who was simultaneously relieved and ticked off at her for making him worry, as if she'd done is purposefully.

"What have who done to what?" he questioned, leaning against her desk and leaning over to peer at her screen.

"These people!-" she jabbed a hand towards the screen, "-my book!"

Booth moved Brennan's shaking finger out of his line of vision and tried to discern for himself what had upset his favorite anthropologist. She was, he reflected, no longer his only anthropologist, but Zack was clearly not in the contest.

A curly-haired head peered into the room, shortly followed by the rest of Jack Hodgins. "What's going on?" he asked, and Booth wondered if the man could sense disturbance in the air, or if Bones' voice carried extremely well. He decided it was probably both.

"They are writing my story!" Brennan said, pushing her chair back (narrowly missing Booth's foot) and turning angrily towards Hodgins. "Except they are ignoring all concepts of character development and justice, not to mention all laws of grammar, and merely having my main characters become involved romantically!"

Booth was thoroughly confused, and opted to bring his folder down to the lower level of the lab while Hodgins attempted to explain the concept of 'fan-fiction' to Brennan.

-----

"I'm pretty sure that Coline Bruyere is our victim. Her family owns the bakery, and no one has seen her recently, but her family wasn't in town so it took us a while to verify that she wasn't with them and get some records for comparison. She matches your profile- nineteen years old, five foot four, fractures in the shins..." Booth said.

Brennan's cheek twitched, but she made no other move as she worked on comparing the healed stress fractures in the x-ray to the ones in the bones, both palms down on the metal examining table.

Booth smirked. "What's eating you today? Interview with the movie star fall short of expectations?"

Brennan looked up, pony-tail bobbing. "No, it was absolutely fine. But I am fairly certain," she continued, pushing herself up and briskly walking to the other side of the table, nearly stepping on Booth's recently-polished leather shoes, "that you could have told me about the victim last night. Ahh, but wait," she said, finally looking up and giving him a sarcastic smile, "I had to meet a movie star, not do my job! So you waited." Her head snapped back down and she made a violent notation on her clipboard.

"Look, Bones, it was one night. You've probably already caught up to speed. You need to get out sometimes, loosen up, have a life-"

"This is Coline. The X-rays confirm it," she cut him off, handing him her findings. "And I consider myself perfectly able to decide how I would like to spend my time, so in the future," she emphasized the last two words, craning her head forwards and sounding slightly strained, "do not keep any information on the victim from me."

Booth jogged to keep up with her brisk steps as she walked away from the examining table. "Hey, Bones, isn't it you who always wants to make 'unbiased initial observations' and wait for accurate information?"

She sighed, stopped in her tracks. "Yes, I do." She swiveled around, looking uncharacteristically worn out. Booth wondered if he really had crossed the line. "I'm sorry. Give that information to Angela and have her confirm my findings. I need to see Hodgins about some splinters of wood embedded in the cranium." The challenge had gone out of her voice, and Booth wondered until she was out of sight if he should stop her and ask her what was wrong.

In the end, his survival instinct won, and he ventured up to Angela's office, wondering when he had consented to fulfill the role of courier.

----

The apartment was small, but full to bursting of bright little knicknaks clustered on every tabletop, hanging from the walls, and even from the ceiling. Booth ducked to avoid clipping his head on a wind chime as he went to join Brennan on the worn cream couch. The room looked like a bizarre mix between a toy store and his grandmother's house.

A forty-something woman in jeans, an oversized t-shirt, and brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail returned from the kitchen with a wad of tissues stuffed into her hand. "I'm sorry, it's just… I still can't believe she's gone," Mrs. Bruyere said, her voice tinged with obvious sorrow. Brennan's heart went out to the woman. She had discovered that her daughter had been murdered and had her body burned in her own bakery only that morning.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, ma'am," Booth said, leaning forward.

She waved her hand through the air distractedly before settling down on the armchair across from them. "Do you know what happened to her?"

Brennan opened her mouth, closed it, and looked at Booth, who nodded, as if she was getting the hang of things. "We don't know the full story yet. We were wondering if we could get some information from you to help us figure that out, though."

"Of course. Anything." Brennan noticed that her voice was thinly accented. She decided on French.

"When was the last time you saw your daughter?" Booth asked, knitting his fingers together.

"Last week. The day my husband and I left town to visit his brother on Wednesday."

"Is there anyone who might have had a grudge against your daughter?" Booth asked, already playing her most likely answer in his mind's eye.

"A grudge? Coline was a sweet girl. Everyone liked her," Mrs. Bruyere replied, right on cue.

"Mrs. Bruyere, who had access to your bakery after-hours?" Brennan asked, not missing a beat.

The woman considered her question for a moment, tugging at a strand of her own dark-brown hair that had fallen over her face. "Me, my husband, Coline, my brother's family, and about five other employees."

"We'll need a list of their names," Booth said. Mrs. Bruyere nodded and picked up a lime-green notepad and a pencil with a fake flower blooming where the eraser should have been.

"Could we look through Coline's room, please?" Brennan asked, standing. Booth rose with her, and Mrs. Bruyere showed them down the hall to a small room with faded floral wallpaper and a twin bed that took up nearly all of the room.

Booth strode over to a small desk in the corner. He picked up a photo of a smiling girl in a long, lilac dress, auburn hair piled onto the top of her head elegantly as she posed with a tall, awkwardly-gangly redheaded young man in a tuxedo. "Senior Prom 2006" was written in gold ink at the bottom. Booth made a mental note to question Mrs. Bruyere about the boy. It was a sad fact of his job- those closest to the victim stood the greatest chance of being the killer.

"She definitely liked to write," Brennan said, flipping through a thick spiral notebook filled with loopy, harried-looking script.

"Coline loved to write," Mrs. Bruyere commented, appearing in the doorway. "That's what she was at university for. Writing."

"Who is the young man in this picture? A boyfriend?" Booth questioned, holding up the wallet-sized prom picture, but Mrs. Bruyere was already shaking her head.

"No, just a friend. Jacob Hill." She reached out with a trembling hand for the picture. "She looked so beautiful that night, her father and I didn't want to let her go…" she closed her eyes and pressed a fist to her mouth, swaying slightly before reopening her eyes. "I'm sorry," she offered with a broken voice, and Booth and Brennan glanced at each other for a moment.

"Mrs. Bruyere, may I please take this back to the lab with me?" Brennan asked, holding the notebook aloft.

"Of course, anything to help."

"That's all for now, ma'am. Thank you for your time." Placing his hand on the small of her back, Booth guided Brennan out of the room and towards the exit. The woman they'd left behind didn't seem to notice, but after Booth closed the door, the sounds of muffled sobbing seeped through underneath it.

-----

The SUV hummed along the quiet country road they'd taken to get to the Bruyere apartment. Booth looked at the woman in the passenger's seat next to him. She was focused on reading the notebook she'd grabbed from Coline's room.

"You look kinda cute when you're all focused like that, Bones," Booth teased, grinning on one side of his mouth.

Brennan snapped back to life and whacked his arm lightly. "Don't you start," she warned.

"It was a smart move to grab the notebook. If there was something going on, an argument or a feud with someone, she might have written about it or incorporated it into her writing," Booth commented.

Brennan frowned. "Writing isn't always inspired by reality, sometimes it's merely fiction." She glanced nervously at the finished manuscript in her bag, ready to be printed at her say-so.

She didn't appreciate the smirk on Booth's face.

-----

AN: Thank you for reading! If you REALLY want me to be thankful, you should review, too! Leave comments, criticisms, good biscotti recipes, messages of condolence because the fish I was watching a few weeks ago died this morning (may he float in peace)… whatever catches your fancy!


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